Category: Ongoing Investigations

Ongoing Investigations: Case #115

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I am not exactly sure what I was expecting with Amnesia Labyrinth 1 but I know it was not this. The story was by Nagaru Tanigawa who wrote the Haruhi Suzumiya books. Narutaki and I were interested because it was being sold like it was a creepy murder mystery. And the book does not lie about that. The fact of the matter is that it probably underplays how utterly messed up this book is. If you go in expecting the happy-go-lucky antics of Haruhi Suzumiya you will be in for a shock. The story has two faces. There is the mostly lighthearted investigation of Souji Kushiki and Sasai Yukako trying to discover who has been killing the most gifted students at school. While there is a dark undercurrent in this half of the story it is mostly upbeat. But the second half of the story resolves around  Souji Kushiki and his family and that is always hyper sexual in the most disturbing way possible. All three of his sisters are clearly engaged in some form of sexual relationship with him. It is really odd in the fact that I am not sure how much these scene are played for the purposes of titillation and how much they are just supposed to be flat-out creepy. They are always seriously creepy. Whenever one of his sisters is flirting with him (or in one cases sleeping with him) there is a distinct feeling that everything going on is very unnatural and sick. But at the same time there is also an air of eroticism in these scenes. I don’t know if it is going for both at the same time or if I am selling short the nudity and sex for just being there for the sake of nudity and sex. But you have to be aware that this is present in the series before going in. There is an intriguing possibly supernatural mystery going on but some people are going to be turned away but the omnipresent twisted sexuality of the manga. The art is oddly variable. At times backgrounds are detailed and complex and other times they are utterly non-existent. Also for some reason the art remind me of a really professional done doujinshi in the character designs and page layout. Overall I can’t place my feelings on this manga. All I do know is that this is not Haruhi.

I had heard of Amnesia Labyrinth probably for the same reason as anyone else has, it is written by the Haruhi author. I also knew it was a mystery series so of course I was curious about it. The book starts with the death of a third top-of-the-class student who we learn later was a friend of Yukako who runs the The Intelligence Committee (which has exactly one member). Souji has just transferred back to the school and also is readjusting to home life and eventually gets swept up in Yukako’s desire to find the culprit. That sounds all well and good, but everything about this series is creepy and it makes you suspicious of everything and everyone involved; I know you wouldn’t think it from that top picture but it is true, in a certain way it is playing with your expectations. Though I won’t say the series doesn’t start out with a not-quite-right vibe, it only becomes more pronounced as the volume continues. Despite things like the clear harem aspects of the series, an enticing mystery is woven in the first volume that made me want to know the answers but kind of afraid to find out. Why did Souji leave previously? What’s with this crazy incest family? Who is that guy who looks like Souji? Why is Yukako so attached to Souji? Does Harumi have multiple personalities? Some of these are actual questions and some of these are my speculations, but I like a mystery that is this meaty. I won’t lie though, the sexual situations in this title made me very uncomfortable, but at least for the moment I’m giving Amnesia Labyrinth the benefit of the doubt because I think we are supposed to be uncomfortable. So turn those pages quickly! I really had to mull over my feelings on this book, but I came to the conclusion that at least for the moment I want to continue. Continue reading →

Ongoing Investigations: Case #114

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I watched some of the various Detective Conan OVAs 1-9 stretched across many years. OVA 10 I haven’t gotten my hands on yet, and the Magic File OVAs I’ll leave for a separate post as they relate to the movies. It’s worth noting that they didn’t start making Conan OVAs until the 2000’s and they continue to make them despite the deadness of the OVA market but hey it’s a huge franchise. For the most part they are silly romps, some not even containing a real case, but not very memorable either way. The better ones are two containing Kaito Kid, perhaps I am just totally bias, OVA 1 which is actually very funny and OVA 4 where Conan and Kid end up on the same train with a precious jewel; OVA 3 guest stars Heiji who teams with Conan to find a missing kid; and finally OVA 9, which was probably my favorite despite not having a case, where Conan sees what the future might hold should he never find an antidote. These OVAs are really just supplemental material that aren’t required viewing so they are easy to just grab a few or skip all together.

hisuicon As a long time fan of the Phoenix Wright games I had to check out Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective to see how the spiritual successor stacked up to the original. While it is very clearly a Shu Takumi game it is a very different in terms of mechanics and flow. In Ghost Trick you start the game after just been killed. You are a ghost who cannot remember who you are, how you died, or who killed you plus on top of that have only until sunrise to figure it all out. You do have a few remarkable ghost powers to help you interact with the land of the living. You can jump from various inanimate objects and manipulate them in a Rube Goldberg fashion. So if wanted to alert someone before they were shot you could say jump into a fan, have it turn on, then jump into a piece of memo paper kicked up by the fan, ride it to a bicycle, and then have the bicycle ring its bell. But if that warning was not enough you can jump into the body of the recently dead and rewind time to 4 minuets before they died. So most of the game is you jumping around trying to save people in hopes that one of them will lead you discover who killed you and why. Ghost Trick has the same snappy writing of the Phoenix Wright games while being a solid departure from the courtroom drama. The twists in the game were clever and shocking but were not out of nowhere especially if you were paying attention. Ghost Trick could easy rank as one of Narutaki’s top 10 games of the year just because you team up with a lovable Pomeranian named Missile during the course of the game. The puzzles were decently changeling without every being unfairly difficult. There are some when you just have to try everything until you see a change. Also sometimes you just have to go through a section, see where you utterly mess up, rewind time, and then avoid the trap they set you up for. The only thing that is completely and utterly unchanged from Phoenix Wright is the music which while great could very easily just be mistaken for the soundtrack for Phoenix Wright 5. It is a really fun game that could be a franchise that equals its older brother.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #113

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I jumped into the Incredible Change-Bots series with a copy of book two. From what I can tell the first book ends the series but was popular enough that they made a sequel. Since this is a comedy it was no too hard to find a silly reason for new silly events to occur with the Change-Bots. The story itself is unabashedly a Transformers: Generation 1 parody down to having Autobot and Decepticon analogs with its own version of Optimus Prime and Megatron as well as most of the other well know Transformers. It takes the overall silliness of the original Transformers cartoon and pushes it to its logical comedic extreme. The humor often very dry even if the jokes themselves are rather goofy. There is humor beyond being a transformers parody but the Transformers parody is a framework that is omnipresent an inescapable.  I think overall the series would work a bit better as a page a week web comic so that the joke does not wear out its welcome. As it stands I found myself losing interest about half way through the book. It was never bad but it just could not sustain my interest. The art is rather of crude but it adds a whimsy to the story that an extremely detailed art style would have prevented. I can clearly see the appeal that a book but I never really got into it. Then again I never liked Adventure Time so maybe I just have a broken sense of humor.

Incredible Change-Bots Two doesn’t have such a complex story that you can’t pick it without having read the first; you probably could have guessed that from the title. What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t just a funny robot series, it is a Transformers parody without trying to hide it in the least. This is most apparent in its opening recap of their history from the war on “Electronocybercircuitron” between the “Awesomebots” and the “Fantasticons” to their landing on earth and continued rivalry. Sadly, those first six pages are the best part of the entire book. They are funny enough to make you giggle as any parody should but the rest isn’t nearly as amusing. This may stem from it not pulling as obviously from Transformers as the opening sequence did; I wonder if the first book is different in that respect. Or perhaps it is just my personal taste about how long a joke can go on. I have rarely seen a parody that didn’t wear out its welcome in about 60-seconds. I agree with Hisui that I could see this as a weekly one-page comic worth tuning-in for because once again its major downfall was length. I really enjoyed the art-style which can be kind of elaborate on the splash pages but most of the time feels like high-level crayon drawings; it added nicely to what humor was there. P.S. I don’t know why Hisui doesn’t like Adventure Time!

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